Ziya Öniş

The Logic of the Developmental State@@@Asia's Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization@@@The Political Economy of the New Asian Industrialism@@@MITI and the Japanese Miracle@@@Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialization

Published originally in 1990 to critical acclaim, Robert Wades Governing the Market quickly established itself as a standard in contemporary political economy. In it, Wade challenged claims both of those who saw the East Asian story as a vindication of free market principles and of those who attributed the success of Taiwan and other countries to government intervention. Instead, Wade turned attention to the way allocation decisions were divided between markets and public administration and the synergy between them. Now, in a new introduction to this paperback edition, Wade reviews the debate about industrial policy in East and Southeast Asia and chronicles the changing fortunes of these economies over the 1990s. He extends the original argument to explain the boom of the first half of the decade and the crash of the second, stressing the links between corporations, banks, governments, international capital markets, and the International Monetary Fund. From this, Wade goes on to outline a new agenda for national and international development policy.

Between Europeanization and Euro‐Asianism: Foreign Policy Activism in Turkey during the AKP Era

Abstract Focusing on Turkish foreign policy in the post‐Cold War era, this paper argues that the period can be divided into three distinct phases: an initial wave of foreign policy activism in the immediate post‐Cold War context; a new or second wave of foreign policy activism during the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) government era with a strong emphasis on Europeanization; and the more recent tension between Europeanization and Euro‐Asianism. This paper argues that during the AKP era Turkey maintained considerable continuity in terms of foreign policy activism and a multilateral approach to policymaking. Yet at the same time, a certain discontinuity or rupture can be identified starting in the middle of the first AKP governments reign, signifying a shift from a commitment to deep Europeanization to loose Europeanization along with a parallel shift to a soft Euro‐Asianism. Ultimately, the interaction between an intricate set of priorities on the domestic and international fronts will determine the future path of Turkish foreign policy.

Conservative globalists versus defensive nationalists: political parties and paradoxes of Europeanization in Turkey

The period since the December 1999 Helsinki summit has been a time of remarkable economic and political change in Turkey. The EU impact was already evident in the 1990s, with the 1995 Customs Union Agreement exerting a significant impact in terms of initiating important economic and political reforms. Yet arguably the real breakthrough occurred and the momentum of ‘Europeanization’ gathered considerable pace, once the goal of full EU membership became a concrete possibility with the recognition in 1999 of Turkey’s candidate status. Political parties have emerged as agents of Europeanization, while themselves being transformed in the Europeanization process. The objective of the present paper is to highlight the role of political parties in Turkey’s recent Europeanization process and to underline some of the peculiarities of the Turkish party system and of some of the key parties as agents of economic and political transformation. From a comparative perspective, the following aspects of Turkey’s Europeanization appear rather striking and paradoxical. Civil society actors have been much more active and vocal in their push for EU membership and the associated reform process than the major political parties. Within civil society, business actors and notably big business have emerged as central. Turning to the parties, the ‘Islamists’ have been transformed much more than their ‘secularist’ counterparts. A political party with explicit Islamist roots, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), established itself as a vigorous supporter of EUrelated reforms following its November 2002 election victory. Yet another paradox is that many of the established parties on both the left and right of the political spectrum can be characterized as ‘defensive nationalists’, in the sense that they are broadly supportive of EU membership in principle but tend to be uncomfortable with key elements of EU conditionality. If membership could be accomplished without reforms, many of these parties would welcome the opportunity. Finally a central paradox is that ‘social democracy’ remains, for historical and other reasons, the element least affected by the ongoing

A New Path Emerges

Abstract:Turkeys economic and political system has been confronted with major challenges during the course of the 1990s. These challenges originating from economic crises, state-centric model of development, European integration and the problems of democratization have brought Turkey to crossroads. In this context, the November 3rd national election was of utmost importance in the determination of Turkeys future course of democratization. The AKP has won the election and formed a single majority government. In the present article, we try to provide a sociological and political economy-based analysis of the election and the origins of the AKPs unprecedented success. We have attempted to highlight the possible domestic and foreign policy-oriented challenges confronted by the AKP. In doing so, we have argued that the possibility of democratic consolidation in Turkey lies in the success of the AKP to cope effectively with these challenges.

The Triumph of Conservative Globalism: The Political Economy of the AKP Era

The AKP, following its third successive electoral victory appears to be far more entrenched than its earlier center-right counterparts in Turkish politics. This article highlights key political economy fundamentals that have rendered the AKP experience unique in the Turkish context. Accordingly, strong economic performance in the context of “regulatory neo-liberalism” helped by a favorable global liquidity environment in the early parts of the decade was a key contributor to the party’s continued electoral success. The party also made effective use of a variety of formal and informal redistributive mechanisms, which I call “controlled neo-populism”, to enlarge its electoral coalition. Furthermore, the fact that Turkey did not suffer a typical old-style economic crisis in the context of the global turmoil of 2008-2009 was important for the AKP’s electoral fortunes. Concomitantly, the AKP government was quite effective in managing the global financial crisis politically and it took advantage of its assertive “new” foreign policy approach. Finally, this study argues that the AKP also benefited from the fragmented opposition.

Global Dynamics, Domestic Coalitions and a Reactive State: Major Policy Shifts in Post-War Turkish Economic Development

The main objective of this study is to propose an analytical framework to explain the major policy shifts that has characterized post-war Turkish economic development; divided into four phases, starting respectively in 1950, 1960, 1980, and 2001. Its main contribution is to incorporate external and internal factors into this framework within a broadly political economy perspective, attaching particular significance to the role of economic crises in moving from one phase to the other. While the role of external agents is identified as the main factor behind policy shifts, the role of domestic coalitions in support of policy regime in each phase is also recognized. Drawing attention to the role of state in the impressive recent growth of countries such as China, India, and Ireland, the paper argues that there is still room for the state taking on a developmental role. The paper recommends that Turkey follows a similar path by improving state capacity not only with respect to its regulatory role but also in more developmental spheres, encompassing its redistributive and transformative role on the basis of a domestically-determined industrialization strategy.

Power, Interests and Coalitions: the political economy of mass privatisation in Turkey

Abstract Privatisation has been on the policy agenda in Turkey since the mid-1980s. Yet progress was slow throughout the first two decades of the Turkish neoliberal experiment. More recently, however, Turkey has experienced a major privatisation boom in the aftermath of the 2001 crisis. This paper tries to understand the nature of the recent privatisation boom from a political economy perspective and attempts to account for the paradox of the mass or hyper-privatisation experience of Turkey, comparable with Mexico and Argentina in the 1990s. A key concept here is the ‘pro-privatization coalition’. An attempt is made to understand how this coalition is progressively strengthened while the power of the anti-privatisation coalition has been undermined in the post-2001 era. An interesting insight in this context concerns the importance of legal and institutional changes which also help to shift the balance from the anti- to the pro-privatization coalition. The final part of the paper aims to study the changing nature of resistance to privatisation by selective references to the opposition to some of the major privatisation deals in Turkey.

Turkey's Political Economy in the Age of Financial Globalization: The Significance of the EU Anchor

The recent Turkish experience clearly illustrates how markets and politics can interact in producing significant economic transformation. Focusing on the new phase of neo-liberal restructuring in Turkey in the post-crisis era, we highlight the importance of the European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) anchors and the specific domestic and external linkages through which these double external anchors have operated. We argue that the anchors played significant and complementary roles in the recent transformation process in Turkey. We also underline some of the tensions that are likely to arise in the new era of accession negotiations with the EU given the incomplete transformation accomplished so far.

Conservative Globalism at the Crossroads: The Justice and Development Party and the Thorny Path to Democratic Consolidation in Turkey

The article builds on the premise that the standard left–right division is not a meaningful characterization of Turkish politics. Political competition in Turkey in the present era is increasingly characterized by a contest between ‘conservative globalists’ and ‘defensive nationalists’ and the political environment is marked by the conspicuous absence of a European-style left-of-centre social democratic party. The article investigates the kinds of influences that enabled the Justice and Development Party to enlarge its electoral coalition in 2007 suggesting an even bigger swing of the pendulum towards conservative globalists compared to the situation in the previous election of 2002. It also tries to highlight the inherent weaknesses of conservative globalism and points towards the absence of effective and constructive opposition as a means of explaining the recent instability and re-polarization in Turkish politics which constitutes a major obstacle on the path to democratic consolidation

Monopolizing the Center: The AKP and the Uncertain Path of Turkish Democracy

The Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi-the AKP) has been in power over a period of twelve years, having won three successive general elections and most likely to win a fourth one in 2015. This is a unique achievement for a party in a country dominated by political parties of the center-right tradition. None of the previous center-right parties in Turkey have come close to matching the AKP’s electoral achievements over seven decades of multi-party democracy. Consequently, many scholars increasingly use the label, “a hegemonic party” to describe the AKP’s unrivalled dominance in the current Turkish political system. 1